Questions tagged [seo]
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of web content in search engines using an understanding of search engines' processes and algorithms. Also known as "natural" or "organic" search, it is distinct from paid web advertising.
1,202
questions
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What are the best ways to improve a site's position in Google?
What are the best ways to improve a site's position in the Google search results?
132
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8
answers
40k
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How should I structure my URLs for both SEO and localization?
When I set up a site in multiple languages, how should I set up my URLs for search engines and usability?
Let's say my site is www.example.com, and I'm translating into French and Spanish. What is ...
69
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6
answers
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What are the most important things I need to do to encourage Google Sitelinks?
My website used to have sitelinks and now it doesn't. It's very possible that it's due to changing the website to a sidebar design instead of having an "interstitial" type landing page which limited ...
27
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4
answers
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Well structured URLs vs. URLs optimized for SEO
Let’s take an example of a movie site. So a well structured set of URLs for this site can be:
Movie page - example.com/movies/the-matrix
Review for movie - example.com/movies/the-matrix/reviews
...
38
votes
4
answers
11k
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Do subdomains help/hurt SEO?
If I have example.com, and blog.example.com, do search engines see those as one site or two? Will using subdomains hurt SEO? I have some technical reasons why I can't use example.com/blog.
23
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5
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How to diagnose a search engine ranking drop?
There has been a significant drop (90%) in traffic from Google to one of my well-established sites (6+ years) in the last week. Searches show that the top 3 wide keywords all dropped 4 spots. Searches ...
61
votes
7
answers
30k
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Will having multiple domains improve my seo?
Lets say I have a domain already, for example www.automobile4u.com (not mine), with a website fully running and all.
The title of my "Website" says:
<title>Used cars - buy and sell your used ...
26
votes
4
answers
20k
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Are keywords in URLs good SEO or needlessly redundant?
A coworker and I are locked in a debate over the value of SEO keywords in the URL of a page. She wants to change all the filenames of the HTML pages of a fencing company so they look like residential-...
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8
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How bad is it to use display: none in CSS?
I've heard many times that it's bad to use display: none for SEO reasons, as it could be an attempt to push in irrelevant popular keywords. A few questions:
Is that still received wisdom?
Does it ...
11
votes
1
answer
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Why would a website with keyword stuffing rank higher than one without in google search results?
Like some other websites, I try to maintain a balance in keywords in comparison to other words. I ran tests of my (optimized) website as well as a (keyword stuffed) competitor website via this SEO ...
15
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3
answers
3k
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What is the best file extension for an SEO friendly URL?
I'm working for a website to convert the website URL to an SEO friendly URL. I plan to use this:
example.com/category-name/pageid-123-page-name
I looked at some similarly categorized, highly ranked ...
11
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2
answers
2k
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Does Google use the Meta Description Tag for Description of Page?
When you do a Google search, there is typically a snippet of sample content from the page. I seem to recall that the Meta Tags can influence this choice of descriptive sentences. Is that correct(?) ...
129
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answers
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Moving from HTTP to HTTPS in Google Search Console
I'm moving from HTTP to HTTPS for my entire site. The site is currently added to Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) as www.example.com and all the pages are indexed without using ...
61
votes
3
answers
5k
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How do I rename a domain and preserve SEO?
As part of graduating from Area51 and becoming a full fledged site we sometimes change domain names from http://topic.stackexchange.com to http://example.com. Aside from the obvious 301 redirect rules ...
55
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9
answers
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Do meta keywords have any impact on ranking algorithms?
From what I have read, Google no longer uses meta keywords in it's ranking algorithm. Is it worth the effort to maintain meta keywords?
10
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6
answers
2k
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How to Remove URLs from Google Search Engine
I have used so many things like url removal request and deleted the pages etc., but still the errors are shown in my webmaster tools.
How can I remove the urls completely from Google?
36
votes
5
answers
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Is it better to put hyphens in a domain name?
Both in terms of SEO and user friendliness, is it better to put hyphens in a multi-words domain name or not ?
For example, is www.stackoverflow.com better than www.stack-overflow.com ?
26
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5
answers
6k
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Does the Google spider render JavaScript?
Does the Google spider knows how to render JavaScript, or only HTML?
3
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1
answer
9k
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Title in Google does not match <title> of document [duplicate]
One of my project's title tag doesn't appear to be getting crawled by Google properly. The title tag of the home page reads:
<title>Grande Prairie Jobs | Job Board for Grande Prairie, Alberta ...
18
votes
2
answers
14k
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SEO preference: does a site with WWW rank better than without WWW?
After having read various articles on this site about WWW or Non-WWW website setup, here, here and here, and after having setup a correct redirection rule in .Htaccess to at least eliminate duplicate ...
8
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3
answers
1k
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My title tag doesn't appear to be getting crawled by Google properly [duplicate]
My title is:
<title>School Management Software, College & University Management Software, Cloud ERP Software</title>
However it's showing up like this in Google:
Is there something ...
55
votes
4
answers
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Does it make a difference if your URL path ends in a trailing slash or not?
Does it make any difference to SEO ratings what-so-ever if your url has a trailing slash:
http://www.example.com/some/slug/paths/
as opposed to one that does not:
http://www.example.com/some/slug/...
48
votes
4
answers
40k
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How can I prevent Google mistakenly offering to translate a page to English when it already is in English?
Several of my site's pages are appearing in search results with [Translate this page] next to it. When I click that it takes me to Google Translate and translates my page "from Catalan to English".
...
27
votes
7
answers
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Should I use a file extension or not?
I've always wondered about this and never found a good solution.
But this question reminded me of it.
When I have a URL on my website it can be displayed and accessed any of the following ways:
...
23
votes
5
answers
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Do we still need to avoid using frames and iframes for SEO?
I thought frame and iframe were bad for SEO, but today I was doing a search for "numismatica" on Google.it. The 3rd site is lemonete.com which is all made with frames. A competitor site (nummus.com) ...
121
votes
13
answers
14k
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URLs: Should I use hyphens, underscores or plus symbols?
Which is better for search engines?
example.com/my_cool_page.html
example.com/my-cool-page.html
example.com/my+cool+page.html
30
votes
6
answers
2k
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How can I increase the traffic to my site?
I don't want to do link exchanges or anything shady. I just want some legitimate ways that I can direct a little bit more traffic to my site. How do I do that?
17
votes
1
answer
6k
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Canonical URL for a home page and trailing slashes
My home page could be potentially linked as:
http://example.com
http://example.com/
http://example.com/?ref=1
http://example.com/index.html
http://example.com/index.html?ref=2
(the same page is ...
8
votes
2
answers
801
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How can I get search engines to crawl my site and see a localised view of my data?
(I hope I asked the question right..)
Fake site
Our site lists products for sale.
eg : http://www.myWebSite.com/products/some-drink-we-love-to-guzzle
Each product page has been translated into a few ...
8
votes
2
answers
5k
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GoDaddy's 301 redirect/forwarding has some weird random middleman URL, kills link juice?
I'm trying to use GoDaddy's 301 redirect, which is named as domain forwarding. I set up forwarding DomainA.example to DomainB.example as 301 "type".
I noticed DomainA.example is still indexed in ...
149
votes
2
answers
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Does the order of keywords matter in a page title?
Stack Overflow has made a change to their page titles such that the most popular tag for a question appears at the start of the title. The change is being deployed across the network, so check out ...
29
votes
2
answers
23k
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Is a URL with a query string better or worse for SEO then one without one?
I want to know, is there a huge difference in terms of SEO between these URLs:
example.com/ontario/toronto/listings
or
example.com/listings.php?p=ontario&c=toronto
Will one URL rank higher ...
15
votes
5
answers
7k
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Does changing web hosting affect search engine rankings?
I have been hosting in a server from last 2 years. I am planning to change the hosting server. Before I change the hosting server I would like to know whether it affects my site's rankings or not?
11
votes
6
answers
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Is word count a large ranking factor for Google?
If I read 10 SEO articles, 9 out of 10 have said that you should have 1000 -3000 words. That is huge. Generally it takes more than 3 -5 hours to write a well researched 2000+ word article.
Does it ...
10
votes
1
answer
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How to effectively close a page?
Before asking my question, I'll use an example to clarify the idea.
Say that a company used to sell horses and then they turn into a sheeps business. While some of the old pages can be mapped to the ...
8
votes
4
answers
6k
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How to SEO a Single-Page website
I am creating a new website for a client, and I think a single page website / layout will be pretty neat. There is not that much detailed content, it is a company that imports a lot of products from ...
3
votes
2
answers
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What is a toxic link?
I asked a similar question a few months back about when does a good link become toxic? but this time I'm asking "what is a toxic link?". You read all over the internet that you should disavow your ...
32
votes
6
answers
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How do StackOverflow questions appear in Google search results so quickly?
How is it that questions posted to the Stack Overflow show up as #1 in Google search results just minutes after being submitted? What SEO practices are being used to generate this sort of up-to-the-...
23
votes
2
answers
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Do search engines index text contained in SVG elements?
Example:
<svg><text>Hello World</text></svg>?
17
votes
2
answers
4k
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What is the best placement for the ID in a URL for SEO?
I would like to know what's the best location for an ID in a SEO optimized URL:
http://www.example.com/123/slug-title
http://www.example.com/slug-title-123
7
votes
2
answers
6k
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SEO for pages that load from a database?
I developed a website that has only one page in the public html directory (index.php). All content is dynamically loaded as different pages.
I believe that what we type into this site is stored in a ...
3
votes
1
answer
544
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Improve Google ranking for general vs. specific keywords
If a keyword phrase contains another keyword phrase (eg. "one two three four five" → "one two three"), does improving SERP ranking for the shorter phrase "one two three" (using backlinks) ...
34
votes
6
answers
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SEO: How to Separate Fact from Fiction?
I am interested in learning about SEO, as many of you may already know. I am by far not a pro, but would love to learn. I currently own a number of domains etc that I am playing around with content ...
31
votes
2
answers
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How to use rel='canonical' properly
I have 3 URLS that serve the same data:
www.example.com/product/foo
www.example.com/product/foo?id=1
www.example.com?product=foo
For Google's sake I want the URL www.example.com/product/foo to be ...
30
votes
3
answers
2k
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What are the SEO rules for HTML 5?
What are the rules of engagement with respect to SEO in HTML 5?
Examples of things we have been mulling over with no conclusion:
Are you penalised for not using <head> and <body> tags?
...
27
votes
10
answers
11k
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SEO regarding using separate <h1> tags for the logo and website name
Is is true <h1> tag should not have more than 1 on every page for SEO?
Every pages on the header, it includes and <h1> tag. Website Name which show an image from logo class, like this:
&...
14
votes
4
answers
29k
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Sitemaps - one per subdomain or one for the base domain?
I have more than 5 subdomains on a project, say developer, www, staff and some more, what is the best practice in creating sitemaps?
All subdomains that share a same sitemap at base domain (example....
12
votes
2
answers
1k
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Do server location or TLD affect SEO
I have heard(read) SEO experts who claims that you server position will affect your SEO. In the latest example it was about an international site targeting the Russian market so:
Does the server ...
10
votes
3
answers
453
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Local SEO Strategies
What are your strategies for local SEO? For example, if you had a web design company in Lincoln, Nebraska, what would you do for your website from an SEO perspective?
9
votes
4
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Google doesn't seem to update the description or title of my homepage
Before we launched our website, we had set up a "coming soon" page and google picked up the title and description from its contents. So the description in the search results said:
Coming soon! ...